>Dear present & future gummists:
>
>Having on hand 4 kinds of gum arabic -- a sample from Photographer's
>Formulary, the "Premier" gum from Daniel Smith, my old lithographer's
>gum-14, and my new RBP gum, I was compelled by out-of-body forces to do a
>comparison test, which in case you want to stop reading right now had few
>conclusions.
Now that I have lost my urge to ball mill pigments, temporarily at least,
I'm thinking about gum. My feeling is that what makes one gum better is the
impurities or more precisely the lack of impurities. I made liquid from
powder years ago and as I remember, it was pretty dirty looking. We make
liquid developers from technical grade chemicals, they too come out when
dissolved to be real dirty but they clean up with an overnight cycling
through a charcoal filter. I was wondering if the same would work for the
gum. I could make up a 50 gallon tank at say 20 Baume and remove all
reactants and clean it up with charcoal so it's nice and white. The user
could then dilute with water to the desired Baume using a chart or nomagraph.
What is your feeling, if any, about what makes on gum better than another?
I know you said you had few conclusions but you might have some intuitions.
Thinking out loud.
Dick Sullivan
Bostick & Sullivan
1541 Center Dr.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
87505